September 11 attacks advance-knowledge conspiracy theories

The 9/11 advance-knowledge debate is a debate about whether anyone outside of al Qaeda had foreknowledge that the September 11, 2001 attacks were going to take place.

Among the issues debated are: whether the Bush Administration or military knew about the threat of planes being used as missiles; how much the intelligence agencies knew about al Qaeda activities inside the United States; whether the put options placed on United Airlines and American Airlines and other questionable trades indicate foreknowledge, and why the identities of the traders have never been made public; whether the warnings from foreign countries were specific enough to have warranted action; whether intelligence information gathered about imminent al Qaeda attacks was specific enough to have warranted action; the extent to which the alleged hijackers were under surveillance prior to the attacks; and whether agents of the Mossad or the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence were aware that the attacks were going to take place.

Using planes as missiles

Immediately following the attacks, President George W. Bush stated that "nobody in our government at least, and I don't the think the prior government, could envisage flying air planes into buildings" and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice claimed no-one "could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile". An Air Force general called the attack "something we had never seen before, something we had never even thought of." Soon after the attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller announced "there were no warning signs that I'm aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country."

Some mainstream media reports have conflicted with these statements, claiming that the FBI and CIA knew of the threat of planes being used as missiles as early as 1995, following the foiling of the Bojinka Plot. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that:

The FBI had advance indications of plans to hijack U.S. airliners and use them as weapons, but neither acted on them nor distributed the intelligence to local police agencies. From the moment of the September 11th attacks, high-ranking federal officials insisted that the terrorists’ method of operation surprised them. Many stick to that story. Actually, elements of the hijacking plan were known to the FBI as early as 1995 and, if coupled with current information, might have uncovered the plot.”

The book The Terror Timeline includes numerous articles that are often cited to suggest that the method of flying planes into buildings was known by U.S. officials:

• In 1994, there were three examples of failed attempts to deliberately crash planes into buildings, including one where a lone pilot crashed a small plane into the lawn of the White House.
• The Bojinka Plot was a foiled large-scale al Qaeda terrorist attack to blow up eleven airliners and their passengers as they flew from Asia to America, due to take place in January 1995.
• The 2000 edition of the FAA’s annual report on Criminal Acts Against Aviation said that although Osama bin Laden ‘is not known to have attacked civil aviation, he has both the motivation and the wherewithal to do so,’ adding, ‘Bin Laden’s anti-Western and anti-American attitudes make him and his followers a significant threat to civil aviation, particularly to U.S. civil aviation.’”
• In April 2001, NORAD ran a war game in which the Pentagon was to become incapacitated; a NORAD planner proposed the simulated crash of a hijacked foreign commercial airliner into the Pentagon but the Joints Chiefs of Staff rejected that scenario as "too unrealistic"
• In July 2001 at the G8 summit in Genoa, anti-aircraft missile batteries were installed following a report that terrorists would try to crash a plane to kill George Bush and other world leaders.
• On the morning of September 11, 2001, the National Reconnaissance Office, who are responsible for operating U.S. reconnaissance satellites, had scheduled an exercise simulating the crashing of an aircraft into their building, four miles from Washington Dulles International Airport.

A 2004 USA Today article, "NORAD had drills of jets as weapons", describes pre-9/11 NORAD drills that suggest they were prepared for such an attack as happened on 9/11:

"In the two years before the September 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties. One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon — but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic."

That NORAD was aware of the threat of terrorists hijacking commercial airliners within the United States, and using them as guided missiles, was flatly denied by the 9/11 Commission, which asserted several times in their report that "The threat of terrorists hijacking commercial airliners within the United States -- and using them as guided missiles -- was not recognized by NORAD before 9/11."

The Joint Inquiry of 2002 confirmed that the Intelligence Community had received at least twelve reports over a seven-year period suggesting that terrorists might use planes as weapons. After briefly discussing each of them, it says that "The CIA disseminated several of these reports to the FBI and to agencies responsible for preventive actions. They included the FAA... Despite these reports, the Intelligence Community did not produce any assessments of the likelihood that terrorists would use planes as weapons, and U.S. policymakers apparently remained unaware of this kind of potential threat." Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger testified to the Joint Inquiry:

"We heard of the idea of planes as weapons, but I don't recall being presented with any specific threat information about an attack of this nature, or highlighting this threat, or indicating it was more likely than any other"

Insider trading

The Times reported on September 18 that investigations were under way into the unusually large numbers of shares in insurance companies and airlines sold off before the attack, in the UK, Italy, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, France and the US. News accounts in the weeks that followed reported a notable pattern of trading in the options of United and American Airlines as well as Morgan Stanley and other market activity. An article published in The Journal of Business in 2006 provides statistical evidence of unusual put option market activity days before 9/11:

Examination of the option trading leading up to September 11 reveals that there was an unusually high level of put buying. This finding is consistent with informed investors having traded options in advance of the attacks.

In a statement to the 9/11 Commission in 2003, Mindy Kleinberg, of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee, said:

Never before on the Chicago Exchange were such large amounts of United and American Airlines options traded. These investors netted a profit of at least $5 million after the September 11th attacks. Interestingly, the names of the investors remain undisclosed and the $5 million remains unclaimed in the Chicago Exchange account.

Regarding these trades, the 9/11 Commission found no malfeasance:

A single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda purchased 95% of the UAL puts on September 6 as part of a trading strategy that also included buying 115,000 shares of American on September 10... much of the seemingly suspicious trading in American on September 10 was traced to a specific U.S.-based options trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers on Sunday, September 9, that recommended these trades.

9/11 Truth Movement members Jim Hoffman, Michael Ruppert and David Ray Griffin are among those who criticise the 9/11 Commission for using a circular argument in concluding that the trades were innocuous primarily because there were no ties to Al-Qaeda. Ruppert also claims that the intelligence agencies constantly monitor the stock exchange and should have "connected the dots" to realise that an event was about to take place involving American Airlines, United Airlines, and the World Trade Center.

Intelligence warnings

The 9/11 Commission Report states that "the 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise. Islamic extremists had given plenty of warnings that they meant to kill Americans indiscriminately and in large numbers." The Report continued:

"During the spring and summer of 2001, U.S. intelligence agencies received a stream of warnings about an attack al Qaeda planned, as one report puts it "something very, very, very big." Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet told us "the system was blinking red.""

The US administration, CIA and FBI received multiple prior warnings from foreign governments and intelligence services, including France, Germany, the UK, Israel, Jordan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Morocco and Russia. The warnings varied in their level of detail, but all stated that they believed an Al Qaeda attack inside the United States was imminent. British Member of Parliament Michael Meacher cites these warnings, suggesting that some of them must have been deliberately ignored. Some of these warnings include the following:

• March 2001 - Italian intelligence warns of an al Qaeda plot in the United States involving a massive strike involving aircraft, based on their wiretap of al Qaeda cell in Milan.
• July 2001 - Jordanian intelligence told US officials that al-Qaeda was planning an attack on American soil, and Egyptian intelligence warned the CIA that 20 al Qaeda jihadists were in the United States, and that four of them were receiving flight training.
• August 2001 - The Israeli Mossad gives the CIA a list of 19 terrorists living in the US and say that they appear to be planning to carry out an attack in the near future.
• August 2001 - The UK is warned three times of an imminent al Qaeda attack in the United States, the third specifying multiple airplane hijackings. According to the Sunday Herald, the report is passed on to President Bush a short time later.
• September 2001 - Egyptian intelligence warns American officials that al Qaeda is in the advanced stages of executing a significant operation against an American target, probably within the US.

A classified military intelligence program known as "Able Danger" was created in October 1999 specifically targeting al Qaeda. According to statements by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and those of four others, Able Danger had identified the September 11, 2001 attack leader Mohamed Atta, and three of the 9/11 plot's other 19 hijackers, as possible members of an al Qaeda cell linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In December 2006, an investigation by the US Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that those assertions were unfounded. It rejected as untrue "one of the most disturbing claims about the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes." Reacting to the Pentagon report, Curt Weldon (R-PA) said "The report trashes the reputations of military officers who had the courage to step forward and... describe important work they were doing to track al-Qaida prior to 9/11".

In her testimony to the 9/11 Commission, Condoleezza Rice stated that "the threat reporting that we received in the spring and summer of 2001 was not specific as to time nor place nor manner of attack. Almost all the reports focussed on al Qaeda activities outside the United States." However, on August 6 2001, President Bush's Presidential Daily Briefing, which was entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States" warns that Bin Laden was planning to exploit his operatives' access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike:

FBI information... indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country, consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attack.

Rice responded, when being asked about the PDB at the Commission hearings, that "it wasn't something that we felt we needed to do anything about".

Blocked al-Qaeda investigations

See also: Responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks § Culpability

Numerous whistleblowers and officials have surfaced, claiming that there was a deliberate effort, from high-ranking officials, to prevent investigations into Al Qaeda.

In 2002, FBI agent Coleen Rowley wrote to FBI director Robert Mueller describing her experience working with Minneapolis FBI agents tracking suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui prior to the attacks.. She describes how FBI HQ personnel in Washington, D.C. had mishandled and failed to take action on information provided by the Minneapolis Field Office, and had failed to issue a warrant to search Moussaui's computer despite having probable cause. Rowley goes on to describe her superior, Agent Marion "Spike" Bowman, as having “consistently, almost deliberately thwarted the Minneapolis FBI agents' efforts” to attain the search warrant. Senator Chuck Grassley later wrote that “If the application for the FISA warrant had gone forward, agents would have found information in Moussaoui's belongings that linked him ... to a major financier of the hijacking plot". Rowley was credited as a whistleblower and jointly awarded the TIME Magazine "Person of the Year" for 2002. Her testimony to the 9/11 Commission was omitted from their final report.

FBI agent and Al-Qaeda expert John P. O'Neill warned of an Al-Qaeda threat to the United States in 2000. He retired from his position in mid 2001, citing repeated blocking of his investigations of Al Qaeda by FBI officials. After his retirement from the FBI, the World Trade Center hired him as its chief of security. He started work on September 11 2001; 9/11 rescue workers found his body in a staircase inside the south tower rubble.

Shortly after the attacks, David Schippers, the chief prosecutor for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, stated that the government had been warned in 1995 about a future attack on a government building and that later he was contacted by three FBI agents who mentioned uncovering a possible terrorist attack planned for lower Manhattan. According to Mr. Schippers, as the agents informed their superiors, they were briefed not to pursue the issue and were threatened with prosecution. Mr. Schippers declared, "Five weeks before the September 11 tragedy, I did my best to get a hold of Attorney General John Ashcroft with my concerns." According to Mr. Schippers, Ashcroft responded that the Justice Department does not start investigations at the top. Author William Norman Grigg agrees with Mr. Schippers in his article "Did We Know What Was Coming?" According to the article, three unnamed veteran federal law enforcement agents confirmed "the information provided to Schippers was widely known within the Bureau before September 11."

According to Senator Bob Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from June 2001 through the buildup to the Iraq war, "Two of the September 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship," as reported by the Miami Herald. And in Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees."

There have also been allegations that the hijackers preparations may have been given assistance by U.S. intelligence. According to CBS news, "two of the Sept. 11 hijackers who lived in San Diego in 2000 rented a room from a man who reportedly worked as an undercover FBI informant....the FBI informant prayed with them and even helped one open a bank account. Doubts have been raised about the speed with which the hijackers were identified, leading to suggestions that the FBI already had the names of the hijackers in advance. In his book Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke said that at 9:59 am on September 11, which is the time when WTC2 collapsed and 8 minutes before NORAD even knew Flight 93 had been hijacked, the FBI already had a list of the 19 alleged hijackers. A former high-level intelligence official said that "Whatever trail was left was left deliberately--for the F.B.I. to chase."

Foreign government foreknowledge

See also: Responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks § Other alleged responsibility

It has been suggested that some foreign governments and intelligence agencies may have had some foreknowledge of the attacks. In particular, the possible foreknowledge of the Israeli Mossad, and possible financial ties to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, have raised doubts about the 9/11 Commission Report conclusion that no one outside the terrorist organisation al Qaeda was involved or had foreknowledge of the attacks. There are also questions about how much was known by other governments and intelligence agencies in countries such as France, the UK, Germany, Italy, Morocco, Jordan and Egypt, which all warned the United States of an imminent attack.

Iran

Sibel Edmonds, an FBI translator, stated that the FBI received information in April 2001, from a reliable Iranian intelligence asset, that Osama Bin Laden was planning attacks on 4-5 cities with planes, and that some of the plotters were already in the country and the attacks would happen in a few months.

Israel

It has been claimed that Israeli espionage agents, and particularly the Mossad, may have had foreknowledge of the attacks.

On September 17, 2001, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz' reported that four hours after the attack, the FBI arrested five Israelis who had been filming the smoking skyline from the roof of a white van in the parking lot of an apartment building, for "puzzling behavior". The Israelis were said to have been videotaping the disaster with cries of joy and mockery. Police found the van and a search revealed $4,700 in cash hidden, along with foreign passports and a boxcutter which aroused suspicions and led to the detention of the occupants. The men were held in detention for more than 2 months, during which time they were subjected to interrogation and lie detector tests, before being deported back to Israel; one of the men (Paul Kurzberg) refused to take the test for 10 weeks, and then failed it. There has been speculation as to whether the men had advance knowledge of the attacks.

The five men worked at the company Urban Moving Systems, owned and operated by Dominick Suter. After the men were arrested the FBI searched their offices and questioned Suter. However, when they returned to interview him again they found he had abandoned the business and fled to Israel; the FBI subsequently placed him on the same suspect list as Mohammed Atta. According to a former CIA chief, there was speculation that Urban Moving Systems may have been a front for an intelligence operation channeling money to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. On June 21, 2002, ABC reported that the FBI had concluded that the van's driver, Paul Kurzberg, and his brother Sivan, were indeed Mossad operatives. According to an FBI spokesman, the men explained that they were celebrating because "...the United States would now have to commit itself to fighting [Middle East] terrorism, that Americans would have an understanding and empathy for Israel’s circumstances, and that the attacks were ultimately a good thing for Israel."

As noted by Christopher Ketchum, in Counterpunch:

What is perhaps most damning is that the Israelis’ celebration on the New Jersey waterfront occurred in the first sixteen minutes after the initial crash, when no one was aware this was a terrorist attack.

In other words, they were seen celebrating immediately after the first plane hit, at a time when major news agencies were still reporting the event as a catastrophic accident.

In March, 2001, the US Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive had issued a warning about people identifying themselves as "Israeli art students" attempting to bypass security and gain entry to federal buildings, and even to the private residences of senior federal officials. It has been suggested that operatives in this "art student spy ring" were tracking the 9/11 hijackers and knew that the attacks were going to take place, although a Drug Enforcement Agency memo leaked in December 2001, warning military bases to be on the alert for “possible intelligence collection being conducted by Israeli art students”, was primarily concerned with the students' efforts to foil investigations into unrelated Israeli organized crime.

The Associated Press reported that "Israeli intelligence services were aware several months before Sept. 11 that bin Laden was planning a large-scale terror attack" and that this information was passed on to Washington. According to Fox News, In August 2001, Israel warned the US that an al-Qaeda attack is imminent. Reportedly, two high-ranking agents from the Mossad come to Washington and warned the FBI and CIA that up to 200 terrorists have slipped into the US and are planning "a major assault on the United States... [on a] large scale target."

France

On December 5 2007 French authorities filed preliminary charges against Guillaume Dasquié, a reporter for the daily Le Monde, for publishing state secrets related to the 9/11 hijackings. Dasquié's April 16 article in Le Monde, titled "September 11: the French had long known" claimed the General Directorate of External Security (DGSE), had warned the U.S. of a possible terrorist plot that involved al-Qaeda hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings some eight months before 9/11. The article contained excerpts from a 328-page classified DGSE report on al-Qaeda activities which included maps, analyses, graphics, and satellite photos.

Warnings given to individuals

There have been claims that some individuals received warnings in advance of the attacks. Shortly after the attacks, Newsweek reported that "Three weeks ago there was another warning that a terrorist strike might be imminent - On September 10, Newsweek has learned, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly cancelled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns."

Additionally, there have been claims that the following individuals were given warnings:

• San Francisco Mayor, Willie Lewis Brown, Jr. canceled his flight plans for September 11, after a receiving a warning late on September 10 from what he described as his airport security.
• Author Salman Rushdie believes that US authorities knew of an imminent terrorist strike. On September 3, the Federal Aviation Administration made an emergency ruling to prevent Mr Rushdie from taking internal flights in Canada and the US. The FAA confirmed that it had stepped up security measures concerning Mr Rushdie but refused to give a reason.
• Odigo Messenger, a company based in Israel, reported that two of its employees received instant messages two hours before the attack, warning them that "something big" was going to happen soon.
• Various individuals who worked at or were due to be at the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, but were not. These include Anne Tatlock, CEO of Fiduciary Trust Company International, and various other business leaders based in the World Trade Center, who were at a meeting hosted by Warren Buffett at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska; Jim Pierce, cousin of President George W. Bush, who was scheduled to attend a conference on the 105th floor of the South Tower, which at the last moment was relocated to a building across the street; Silverstein Properties who, according to the New York Times, had planned to meet on September 11 on the 88th floor of one of the towers to "discuss what to do in the event of a terrorist attack," but canceled the meeting late on September 10 "because one participant could not attend."